ordinary

I wake to white- white clouded light reflecting off white walls, white sheet spreading towards the bed edge, white duvet, with just the corner of the navy starburst embroidery cresting near my eye. The bells are ringing at Hallgrímskirkja, this time not the usual Big Ben borrowing, but something more local. The crisp triplets remind me of an Icelandic psalm my choir is probably singing across town right now, without me, my voice hoarse from the flu that's been snuggling up to me these past days.

Coffee first, simmering in the now beat-up $15 espresso maker my brother customized for me over 10 years ago, the curlicues etched in the aluminum spelling my initials, our family name. The yellow Italian cup and saucer awaits, but for now I'll take up my spot at the kitchen window, resting my chin on the edge of the open window so I can inhale the frigid clean air and look out over the place where I live.

Below me the last of yesterday evening's snowstorm is still nestled in the dips on the red corrugated roof of the sheds, a smocked spot of color surrounded by the gray of the apartment walls nearby. The clotheslines sway in some kind of private courtship dance, a pair of clothespins adding unexpected twitches to the movement. In the distance, the backside of Esja is covered with snow, and I imagine I can taste the wet snowbreeze that is sweeping down the sides. Later, after coffee, there will be the pool, where I will soak in the steam and the hot water, leaning against the turquoise tub-edges and looking out over the other side of Reykjavik, to the paired towers of Háteigskirkja and into my friend T's living room window just across from the pool.

Last week I heard that yet another of my friends is moving abroad. This will be the fourth since I have left Boston to abandon the United States, for China, for Dubai, for Canada. The people I know here are a constantly shifting mass as well- in the past seven months many of the friends I have met here have come and gone, mostly to return to the country where they came from, but others to new adventures in other foreign places. It's like my ex-boyfriend once was told- "you're one of Them", the people who need to, want to, have to wander the world.

Thing is, I'm not sure that's me. When I stand with my nose in the breeze and wait for the sizz of coffee's-done, I'd rather not go anywhere else. How do people who go back to their home countries know when It's Time To Go? Must it always be so? I know more than one person views my living here as one of those things people of my generation and education level are bound to do, but there's that knowledge that they will always Come Home. Do we have to? How do we ever know when we've found the place where we belong, that belongs to us? This is a question even if we never go within more than a day's drive from the place where we were born, but given the relative isolation from familiarity that moving abroad can bring, it's on my mind often these days.

I remember my grandparents, early pioneering expats, who lived in two countries and dozens of foreign cities before ultimately returning to an all-American New England ranch house upon retiring. They didn't want to grow old in a place where they would always have to remember what language to speak. The house, though ordinary on the outside, was crammed with the remnants and memories of the places they lived, some of which are still here with me now- the rug from who-knows-where, the gallery exhibit posters from all over France, the Brazilian wood and stone carvings, the Murano millefiori glass bowl I had always loved.

The decision of where my life will take place does not have to be made all at once, I know, but the more intertwined with Iceland I become, the less this feels like a temporary choice. I've never been the kind of person who had a 10-year plan, or even a 2-year plan, for that matter, so I've never put a timeline on this current adventure. As long as it still feels sometimes so disbelievably fantasyland, I think I'm going to stay a while yet.